Zhanglab

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Leader：Zhang Lixin（张立新）

1. Systems Biology and Synthetic biotechnology: He developed a systems biology platform that decoded microbial molecular machinery, achieving a 1,000-fold increase in avermectins production and a 75% cost reduction. Avermectin derivatives, now on WHO’s Essential Medicines List, form the backbone of mass drug administration programs covering 3.4 billion people, nearly eradicated the river blindness across Africa.

2. “5M” Intelligent Biomanufacturing: His integrated approach—Mechanism, Model, Manipulation, Measurement, and Manufacture—overcame biological complexity, enabling scaling to 500 m³ bioreactors, recognized by WHO as a milestone. His avermectins project received the National Award for Excellence in Science and Technologies. 

3. Sustainable Microbial Natural Product Bank: He established a taxonomy-guided diversification of marine microbial natural product library and a global source for affordable, environmentally friendly production of avermectins, porphyrins, coenzyme Q10, and astaxanthin through an innovative “Chassis-bioprocess-bioreactor” pipeline.

From Elsevier Scopus data, Professor Lixin Zhang has published over 350 papers, 7 books, and 44 patents (28 Chinese patents and 16 PCT patents), with more than 17,000 citations, including five high-impact articles in Nature Biotechnology. Since 2020, his publications in the field of biotechnology have achieved a Field-Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI) of 1.81, which is 44% higher than the global average of 1.12 in the field; 18 publications cited by Patents.  Professor Zhang’s research spans multiple interdisciplinary areas including biotechnology, microbiology, chemistry, and engineering, now ranked top 2% globally on some topics within Metabolic Engineering for Enhanced Natural Product as well as Synthetic biotechnology. As a Chief Scientist, he led twice the projects sponsored by The National Key Fundamental Research Program of China, and was awarded Distinguished Young Scholars by The National Science Foundation of China (NSFC). He served as the founding Editor-in-Chief for Synthetic and Systems Biotechnology and Associate Editor-in-Chief for Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology as well as the SYNBIOCHEM External Advisory Board for the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology. Previously, he served as the President for the International Chemical Biology Society (ICBS), an Executive Board Member of International Committee on the Biology of Actinomycetes (ISBA) and Global Industrial Microorganisms (GIM).

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